Kenneth Brown
of The Crossroads
Saskatchewan Party leadership candidate Gordon Wyant says he plans to lead the party in line with its founding principles if he is elected to be the next premier.
There are five candidates running for the Saskatchewan Party leadership. The five candidates will be featured in a series of articles over a five-week period leading up to Dec. 8, the deadline for when party memberships must be obtained or renewed for members to vote in the leadership election.
Gord Wyant
The six leadership candidates are Wyant, Tina Beaudry-Mellor, Ken Cheveldayoff, Rob Clarke, Alanna Koch and Scott Moe. The candidates are being featured by the order in which interviews had been conducted either by phone or in person.
While the New Democratic Party of Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan Liberal Party will also hold leadership conventions in 2018, the leadership race for the Saskatchewan Party has greater significance because the winner becomes the province’s next premier.
To be eligible to vote in the leadership election, new memberships and membership renewals must be received by the Saskatchewan Party headquarters by no later than Dec. 8 at 5 p.m. or people will not be added to the official voters list. The leadership election takes place on Jan. 27.
Wyant was first elected in a byelection in 2010 and he was re-elected after general elections in 2011 and 2016. He has served as minister of justice and attorney general, and minister responsible Saskatchewan Power Corporation and SaskBuilds. Wyant has also served as the deputy government house leader.
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A lawyer in his professional career, Wyant received a Queen’s Counsel designation in 2009. He has been a public servant since 2000 having been a trustee on the Saskatoon Public School Board and a councillor for the City of Saskatoon.
The Saskatoon Northwest MLA said he started to consider running for leader when Premier Brad Wall announced he was stepping down for the purpose of party renewal. Wyant said he decided to enter the leadership race because he believes he has a lot to add to the renewal process from previous experiences in his public and professional careers.
He noted that there is a voice to be brought to the leadership campaign with respect to where the party, itself, has come from. The Saskatchewan Party was formed for a reason and Wyant wants to stay true to the party’s past.
“I want to make sure that we’re true to our founding principles and use those principles to build on what we’ve accomplished over the last 10 years,” he said. “This is a coalition, and I’m concerned that we make sure that we maintain that coalition as we move forward to provide government to the next generation of people in this province.”
Wyant said the desire to stay true to those founding principles served as motivation for him to run for leader. The party is a big tent and he wants to ensure the flaps of the tent are wide open to know where the party came from as it moves forward.
As the son of a first generation Canadian, he said the family came to Canada to pursue a better life for future generations of the family. He said he believes his responsibility is to ensure that the province’s current and future residents are able to provide a better life for their families.
The leadership candidate has been busy attending regional meetings for the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association, so he has been able to learn a lot about the challenges being faced by the municipal sector.
Wyant said he believes an important aspect of the party renewal process is getting out and talking to people. The government sets policy on behalf of the people, so it is important to know what people are thinking, he said. Wyant has heard a lot about infrastructure challenges, especially for municipalities in rural areas, and how government could be more responsive by building partnerships with the municipal sector.
In a way, he said party renewal is about listening to people and talking about challenges both at the local level and provincial level. Renewal is about setting policies to reflect the people’s needs, so renewal is not about changing the course of government by moving in a different direction, he said.
The candidate said his focus, if elected as leader, would be on both urban and rural parts of the province. Wyant said economic challenges in rural or urban settings have an impact on the province as a whole, an important idea to keep in mind.
“We talk about the rural economy and the urban economy, but there’s only one economy,” he said, noting that urban and rural concerns are closely connected. “We have to be very careful about this because this is a symbiotic relationship, so we can’t think of urban without thinking of rural and we can’t think of rural without thinking of urban.”
Wyant said his main message is he wants the party to govern from the political centre. The party’s caucus believes in being fiscally conservative and living within its means, but there is also a need to be socially responsible to ensure all citizens have an opportunity to succeed.
He added that all of the leadership candidates would make a good premier, but he believes his background, broad outlook, and breadth of experience in the public and private sectors set him apart from the other candidates.
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